Job Discussion Forums

[Digitize]

I'm looking to teach for a month or two this summer. I will have one year of experience with primary school students. I would prefer something that is coupled with a Chinese language learning program for me. Let me know if you have any thoughts. Thanks!

[aleconner]

You can contact New Oriental and interview for one of their summer camp teaching gigs. I worked for them last summer, for the duration of the camp program. It began in early July and lasted until late August.

Basically, New Oriental rents out the campuses of various private schools and hotels in Beijing, in order to use them as temporary teaching venues and accommodation for the students. The students are mostly teenagers from out of town, whose parents want them to keep studying through the summer. The class schedule is intense, as the students have English writing, pronunciation and reading classes in addition to the conversation class (which you teach).

Each class is 2 1/2 hours in length, with a ten minute break in the middle. You will have one to three classes per day, with only a few days off randomly scattered throughout the duration of the summer camp period. Each teacher is assigned a number of different classes which take place at a variety of venues around town. New Oriental does provide drivers to shuttle you to and from these classes. They also provide free accommodation to foreign teachers who participate in the program. The accommodation will be on the the site of one of your camp classes.

As mentioned above, the schedule can be intense. I spent an average of 30 hours in the classroom per week, not to mention class preparation time.

With one year of experience, you should be offered about 180 RMB per hour. Try negotiating for more, but don't expect more than 200. You will be asked to give a 15-20 minute teaching demonstration to their HR director at their headquarters in Zhongguancun.

The upshot of all this is that I worked from early July to mid August and walked away with 40,000 RMB gross, 34,000 net (after taxes).

[Digitize]

That is very helpful. Thanks aleconner

[drjtrekker]

Anyone suggest some schools that do a shorter term summer camp, lets say about 3-4 weeks???